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Monday, September 18, 2006

More On The PlayStation 3 Launch

The Brother and I were back in hometown this weekend and we both had already decided we wanted a Wii when it launches. I still find the PlayStation 3 fairly interesting. For one thing, check out this preview of Resistance: Fall Of Man -

The game itself uses Insomniac’s proprietary engine and the entire single-player campaign can be played in co-op mode. There will be three vehicles that can be driven in co-op mode.

Graphically the game was stunning. During the event in Burbank, it was running at 720p, but the goal is to have it up to 1080 by launch. The environments are destructible and detailed. The sound was equal to the graphics, with a rich narrative.

Hands on allowed the media to play parts of levels, not full levels, but the experience was somewhat typical of the FPS genre in some regards, but not so in many others. The AI of the enemy was bright and often the Chimera employed tactics that some FPS gamers use – like run forward, shoot and then backpedal while continuing to shoot.

In all this is one launch title that is looking like a must-have for potential PS3 owners. Sony allowed a treat in seeing snippets of the game, but these were more than enough to whet the appetite for much more.
-- Resistance: Fall of Man Preview from GameZone.com

Two things - one, it sounds like a very solid launch title. Two, I've got no interest in it right now because the resolutions sounds like it's high def friendly - but probably not standard def friendly. And I'm guessing Sony isn't worrying about being standard def friendly. NPR just had an interview with columnist David Pogue about the upcoming format war. His advice was a solid: stay out of the middle of it. Course, he was recommending HD-DVD over Blu-Ray (if one simply must jump in) based on price alone.

And he was leaving the PlayStation 3 out of the equation. At just $100 more than the HD-DVD player and with a whole slew of other functions - it's clearly the beach-head of the coming high def war. I don't think Sony is going to waste too much time worrying about things running at 480 and below.

2007 is going to be a fascinating year for technology.




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2 comments:

Unknown said...

Word jumble there: "Sony NPR"?

Anyway, I too heard Pogue's comments and that's the first time I've heard someone in the media talk about how both formats may fail. Frankly, that wouldn't bother me too much if both Toshiba and Sony got a hefty slice of humble pie.

Josh said...

Thanks for the catch. When doing three things at once I sometimes do things like forget to finish sentences.

Yeah ... I think that's fairly astute. I had forgotten about the invisible format war that was DVD audio. If high def formats can't gel before people start pulling HDTV content onto hard drives they could totally both fail.

Then the PlayStation 3 really will have a big price issue. As a cheaper Blu-Ray player, it makes some sense. While I think having the higher capactiy media is a big asset for the games themselves, it's not alone a justification for the price gap.

I gotta get me a lot of popcorn to watch this coming year.